We appreciate your visiting this website (the “Site”). Our visitors’ privacy and trust are important to us. We provide this notice of our Privacy Policy in order to make sure that your expectations and our practices are aligned, and that you (“you” or “User”) are aware of your choices with regard to our use and disclosure of the information you provide to us.

Section 1. OVERVIEW.

(a) This Privacy Policy applies to your apply to your use of this website, including related digital publications, bulletin boards, forums, social media and e-newsletters (the “Site”) and, without limitation, (i) all websites owned and/or provided by Advantage Business Media LLC (“ABM” or “us”); (ii) all services offered through this Site and/or any other ABM website; (iii) all software offerings and applications owned and/or provided by ABM and/or available on or through this Site or any other ABM website; and (iv) all web pages, data, text, images, photographs, illustrations, graphics, audio, video and documents including articles, marketing materials, press releases and other information and content available on or through this Site or any ABM website (together with the Site, (i) through (iv), collectively the “Services”). This Privacy Policy does not apply to the practices of companies that ABM does not own or control, or to people that ABM does not employ or manage.

(b) This Privacy Policy does not apply to information we collect by other means (including offline) or from other sources or pursuant to a separate written or electronic agreement with you.

(c) By accessing and using this Site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand this Privacy Policy, and that you accept them and agree to be legally bound by them. You do not have permission to use this Site if you do not accept and agree to be legally bound by this Privacy Policy. Your use of this Site constitutes your acceptance of this Privacy Policy and your consent to any action we take with respect to your information in compliance with this Privacy Policy.

(d) We may change the terms of this Privacy Policy, so Users are encouraged to review this page from time to time. Your continued use of this Site following the posting of changes to the Privacy Policy means that you accept the changes.

Section 2. INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE COLLECT IT.

(a) We require you to provide certain information about yourself when you register with this Site and when you request products and services. We also collect information when you participate in contests and surveys, when you respond to requests for feedback and when you submit postings to public areas of this Site (e.g., moderated discussions and bulletin boards).

(b) The information we collect may include information from which you may be personally identified (“Personally Identifiable Information”), such as name, postal address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address, and certain business information such as employer name, occupation, industry, job function, job title and buying information (e.g., preferences or history),and certain optional information such as birth date, birthplace, mother’s maiden name, gender, geolocation information, zip code, biographical information, personal interests, and Facebook/Twitter/Google/ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/MSN/SKYPE user name (or similar user names), or photos, videos, audio files that may contain your image or voice, when you register with them, use the particular products or services, or post content on a blog site as a guest with authoring rights, as applicable. We may also collect information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners. This information might include information necessary to process payments due to us from you such as your credit card number. This Site only collects Personally Identifiable Information with your knowledge.

(c) When you visit this Site, we may collect the IP address of your computer. We also use automatic data collection technology to record other information that identifies your computer and tracks your behavior on the Site. We may automatically receive and record information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, cookies, and the pages you request, as well as pages you have visited of our partner and affiliate websites and the products you were interested in on that site. We do not collect Personally Identifiable Information in this way, but if you provide us with Personally Identifiable Information, we may associate that information with the information that is collected automatically.

(d) We may occasionally obtain IP addresses from users depending upon how you access our Site. IP addresses, browser, and session information may be used for various purposes, including to:

(i) Diagnose and prevent service or technology problems reported by our users or engineers that are associated with the IP addresses controlled by a specific web company or ISP.

(ii) Estimate the total number of users visiting ABM websites from specific geographical regions.

(iii) Help determine which users have access privileges to certain content, services, or resources that we offer.

(iv) Monitor and prevent fraud and abuse.

(v) Estimate and report our total audience size and traffic.

(vi) The Services may display your IP address to the owners or maintainers of certain journals or Blogs when you post to those journals or Blogs and the owner or maintainer has enabled functionality on the sites for this purpose.

Section 3. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION.

(a) We use Personally Identifiable Information collected on this Site for the following purposes:

(i) To provide you with this Site and other products and services.

(ii) To respond to your inquiries and contact you about changes regarding the Site.

(iii) To provide you with e-mail, fax and other notices (such as expiration and renewal notices) regarding your account and the products or services that you are receiving, and for billing and collection purposes.

(iv) For support for internal operations including, among other things, contextualizing advertising, frequency capping, legal compliance, site analysis and network communications.

(v) For any other purpose disclosed at the time the information is collected or to which you consent.

(vi) As otherwise specifically described in this Privacy Policy or the Terms (Click Here for Terms).

(b) We may use your information to better understand our Users and to improve our Site. For example, we may use this information to determine what portions of the Site are most popular and the demographics of our Users generally. Cookies and other User information also enable us to customize your experience on the Site. We may use IP addresses to help diagnose problems with our servers or to administer our Site. We may also use IP addresses to help identify a User during a particular session and to gather data regarding use of the Site.

(c) We may use the information you provide us to send you e-mail, fax and other communications on behalf of ABM and our affiliates. These communications may include e-mail newsletters that are relevant to this Site, as well as offers for other ABM services. All email newsletters will provide you with an opportunity to opt out of receiving future issues of the newsletter. All promotional offers will include an opportunity to opt out of receiving future promotions from the brand whose product/service is being promoted.

(d) We may use your information to send you e-mail and other communications on behalf of third parties. Each of these communications will include instructions for opting out of receiving future third party offers from us. You may also opt out of receiving third party offers from this Site at any time by sending an e-mail to privacymanager@advantagemedia.com with the subject line “opt out – third party” or by such other means as we may from time to time make available to you.

Section 4. OUR DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION.

We may disclose aggregated, anonymous statistics about many Users, and individual information that is not Personally Identifiable Information without restriction as long as no individual is identifiable by the information disclosed. Otherwise, we will not disclose your Personally Identifiable Information except as follows:

(a) Name and/or business name and title (but not information by which you may be contacted (i.e. name, postal address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address) in representative lists of our magazine circulation and/or web site membership, but not for further use or dissemination by the recipient.

(b) To third parties engaged to provide services under contractual requirement to keep Personally Identifiable Information confidential and use it only to perform the services.

(c) Portions of this Site may be provided as “Premium” or “Sponsored” content. Premium or Sponsored content is made available to Users on the condition that we may share certain of the User’s registration information with the Premium or Sponsored content’s sponsors and advertisers. We will always disclose when you are registering or being provided with Premium or Sponsored content.

(d) To other third parties to market their products or services under contractual requirement to keep Personally Identifiable Information confidential and use it only to market and provide their products or services. You may opt out of such disclosures by sending an e-mail to privacymanager@advantagemedia.com with the subject line: “do not disclose” or by such other means as we may from time to time make available to you.

(e) To any successor pursuant to an asset sale, merger, consolidation, restructuring, reorganization, liquidation or other similar transaction involving ABM or this Site.

(f) When we believe such disclosure is required by law, regulation or securities exchange requirement or for the protection of persons or property.

(g) When disclosure is necessary to accomplish the purpose for which you provide it.

(h) We may share any information (including Personally Identifiable Information) you provide with other ABM member companies for any uses consistent with those disclosed in this Privacy Policy.

Section 5. SHARING OF PERSONAL INFORMATION.

(a) We do not share personal information we learn about you from your use of the Site and Services with others, except as described in this Privacy Policy. We do not share your information with unrelated third parties for their direct marketing purposes. However, we may display targeted advertisements based on personal information.

(b) We may share personally identifiable information about you under the following circumstances:

(i) In the course of operating our business it may be necessary or appropriate for us to provide access to your personal information to others, such as our service providers, contractors, and select vendors so that we can operate the Services and our business. Where practical, we seek to obtain confidentiality agreements that are consistent with this policy and that limit others’ use or disclosure of the information you have shared.

(ii) We may share your personal information to respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, to establish or exercise our legal rights or, defend against legal claims, and if in our judgment in such circumstances disclosure is required or appropriate.

(iii) We may share your personal information if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our various terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.

(iv) As we continue to develop our business, we may also buy or sell all or part of our business. In such transactions, personally identifiable information you have shared with us is generally one of the business assets that will be transferred. The transferred personally identifiable information will remain subject to the promises made in this privacy policy or subsequent policies to which you have consented.

(c) When you post a message, your user ID or alias that you are posting under may be visible to other users.

(d) IF YOU POST PERSONAL INFORMATION ONLINE THAT IS ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC, YOU MAY RECEIVE UNSOLICITED MESSAGES FROM OTHER PARTIES IN RETURN.

Section 6. SECURITY.

We use reasonable safeguards to protect Personally Identifiable Information we collect on this Site from unauthorized access, use, modification or disclosure. However, due to the design of the Internet and other factors outside of our control, we cannot guarantee that communications between you and our servers will be free from unauthorized access by third parties.

Section 7. RIGHTS TO ACCESS AND CHANGE INFORMATION.

You may view and update information that you previously submitted to this Site by visiting the newsletter or website registration page for this Site, or which you submitted to request a print publication, by sending an e-mail to privacymanager@advantagemedia.com or by such other means as we may from time to time make available to you. However, a request to change information may not be accommodated if the request would conflict with legal requirements or result in incorrect information. Requests to view or change personal information may take a few days to process.

Section 8. INFORMATION RELATED TO CHILDREN.

(a) The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) requires that we inform parents and legal guardians about how we collect, use, and disclose personal information (from children under 13 years of age. The Services are not directed at children under 13 years of age, but we recognize that with proper adult supervision some parents might permit their children to visit and utilize the Services. COPPA requires that we obtain the consent of parents and guardians in order for children under 13 years of age to use certain features of the Services.

(b) When your child attempts to register and/or provide personal information to ABM (including on any of the Services), we require a parent or legal guardian to: complete the registration; review our privacy policy and to submit a valid credit card number to verify that the child’s parent or guardian knows about and authorizes our information practices related to children protected by COPPA; and verify through the use of an email confirmation and second authorization that the parent or guardian consents to any applicable the Terms and Conditions and this Privacy Policy.

(c) The information we may collect may include information from which children that may be personally identified include names, postal address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address, buying information (e.g., preferences or history), birth date, birthplace, parents name, gender, geolocation information, zip code, biographical information, personal interests, and Facebook/Twitter/Google/ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/MSN/SKYPE user name (or similar user names), when you register with them, use the particular products or services, or post content on a blog site as a guest with authoring rights, or photos, videos, audio files that may contain children’s image or voice as applicable.

(d) Once parental or guardian notice and consent has been verified, the information we collect will be treated the same as information collected from any other user of the Services. Without verified parental notice and consent, we will not knowingly collect personal information of children under 13 years of age, and if we learn that we have inadvertently collected such information, we will promptly delete it, provided that we will not delete the information needed to (i) protect the security or integrity of the Site or Services; (ii) take precautions against liability; (iii) respond to judicial process; or (iv) to the extent permitted under other provisions of law, to provide information to law enforcement agencies or for an investigation on a matter related to public safety; and where such information is not be used for any other purpose.

(e) How Parents Can Access their Children’s Personal Information:

(i) In compliance with COPPA, parents and legal guardians may request us to review, delete, or stop the collection of the personally identifiable information of their child. In order to do so, you may contact us by letter, phone, or email, using the address information provided in Section 11 of this Privacy Policy or on our “Contact Us” page of the Site.

(ii) If you request that no further information about your child be collected or used, we will be required to terminate your child’s ability to use the Services that require a user to “sign in.”

(f) For purposes of this Section 8, persistent identifiers that can be used to recognize a user over time and across different websites or online services, such as a user name is also considered personal information. Where the Site or Services collect a persistent identifier and no other personal information and such identifier is used for the sole purpose of providing support for the internal operations of the Site or the Service, no notice will be given.

Section 9. LINKS.

This Site contains content, services, advertising and other materials that link to Web sites operated by third parties. We have no control over those other sites, and this Privacy Policy does not apply to them. We encourage you to refer to the privacy policies, if any, of those sites.

(b) Automatic Data Collection: Methods used to collect this information may include “cookies” and “clear GIFs” (also known as “pixel tags” or “beacons”). A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a server and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Most browsers allow Users to block the receipt of cookies, but doing so may compromise your ability to use certain features of this Site. A clear GIF is a small graphic image, typically used in connection with cookies, that is placed on a web site or in an email message. A clear GIF can monitor certain user behavior, such as your usage of the web site, whether you opened an email message or whether you clicked on a URL in an email message.

(c) Some of the materials included on this Site, including advertising, may be served by third parties. These third parties, in the course of serving such materials, may collect information regarding your use of this Site and how you respond to e-mail communications, using methods that may include those described in the preceding paragraph. Collection, use, disclosure and security of information collected by third parties are subject to the privacy policies of those third parties.